Making Plans

So, we've all been told it's good to make plans and goals and to shoot for something. Cody and I have been feeling a tad lost as to what we are doing and were we are going. Although, I will say that since Cody has switched to Illustration I actually feel more at peace. But we still feel like there is more guidance waiting for us. And it just so happened that in the Friend magazine a few months back (at a particularly trying time) we read a story about a boy who lost a coin in the grass and couldn't find it. His mother had taught him about praying with a plan (think of the bother of Jared and the 16 stones (Ether 2: 22-25 and Ether 3: 1, 4-6)) anyways so the boy made a plan of how to find the coin and then prayed that the Lord would help him find it...and he did!

That same week we read that article we also learned about the Brother of Jared in Sunday School (before we were called to teach Sunbeams) This isn't going to be like a Ensign article. But we did talk about what we want to happen the rest of school and planned out Cody's school schedule so we had an idea of when he would graduate. Just today I sat down and decided to write down what we had talked about and put it up so we could see it and remember it and refer to it. I thought that maybe if I put it on here it would be more of an incentive to make sure we do it. :) This doesn't include Cody's actual schedule - Just a basic outline of each semester. 

Fall 2013

School - Cody

Preschool - Joseph

Going to the General Relief Society Meeting tomorrow with a group of girls in the ward!!

Home for Thanksgiving

Winter 2014

School - Cody

Preschool - Joseph

Baby in January !!!!

May - Women's Conference (I have desperately wanted to go since we moved here)

Spring/Summer 2014

Cody - Internship

Home for Schultz Reunion (and home to see Robles)

Triathamom (a goal of mine to accomplish this the end of next summer)

Fall 2014

School - Cody

Kindergarten - Joseph !!!

Preschool - Rylee ? (not sure if I will do this for Rylee...)

Home for Christmas

Winter 2015

School - Cody

Kindergarten - Joseph

Preschool - Rylee ?

**Cody Graduate! (possibly now or in the Spring)

Summer 2015

DISNEYLAND (or some other BIG vacation to celebrate!)

Very Exciting. I've been needing a little of that in my life after such a bad summer. :(    :)

Over-justification?

This entire segment is taken from my textbook for psychology.

It is about one aspect of Psychology called Behaviorism. Specifically Operant Conditioning.

I know it's long but it's quite interesting - and there is a question of what your opinion is on the matter. I want to know what you guys think. Is it good to always give rewards, even for things that are already inwardly gratifying? (Read the Whole thing first)

(pg 279) "In one study, nursery school children were given colored pens and paper and were asked to draw whatever they wanted (Lepper & Greene, 1978). For a young child, this is a pretty satisfying event: The pleasures of drawing and creative expression are rewarding all by themselves. Some children, though, received a “Good Player Award” for their efforts at artwork, whereas other children did not. As you may have guessed, the Good Players spent more time at the task than the other children. As you may not have guessed, when the experimenters stopped handing out the Good Player certificates to the first group, the amount of time the children spent drawing dropped significantly below that of the group that never received any external reinforcements.

Drawing pictures is fun. Drawing pictures for external rewards might, oddly enough, make drawing pictures seem like much less fun. 

This was a case of overjustification, or too much reinforcement. The children who received the extrinsic reinforcement of the certificate came to view their task as one that gets rewards. The children who didn’t receive the extrinsic reinforcement continued to perform the task for its own sake. When the extrinsic rewards were later removed, children in the first group found little reason to continue engaging in the task. Other researchers have found that when people are paid for tasks such as writing poetry, drawing, or finding solutions to economic and business problems, they tend to produce less creative solutions when monetary rewards are offered (Amabile, 1996). You’ll see more about extrinsic rewards in the next chapter on motivation and you can weigh in on these issues in the Where Do You Stand? box at the end of this chapter.

(pg 304) Learning for Rewards or for Its Own Sake? (where do you stand box)

The principles of operant conditioning and the merits of reinforcement have more than found their way into mainstream culture. The least psychology-savvy parent intuitively understands that rewarding a child’s good behavior should make that behavior more likely to occur in the future; the “law of effect” may mean nothing to this parent, but the principle and the outcome are readily appreciated nonetheless. And what parent wouldn’t want the best for her or his child? If reward shapes good behavior, then more reward must be the pathway to exemplary behavior, often in the form of good grades, high test scores, and overall clean living. So, bring on the rewards.
Maybe, maybe not. As you learned earlier in this chapter, the over-justification effect predicts that sometimes too much external reinforcement for performing an intrinsically rewarding task can undermine future performance. Rewarding a child for getting good grades or high test scores might backfire: The child may come to see the behavior as directed toward the attainment of rewards rather than for its own satisfying outcomes. In short, learning should be fun for its own sake, not because new toys, new clothes, or cash are riding on a set of straight A’s.
Many parents seem to think differently. You probably have friends whose parents shower them with gifts whenever a report card shows improvement; in fact, you may have experienced this yourself. Nobody objects to a little recognition now and then, and it’s nice to know that others appreciate your hard work. In fact, if you’d like to know the many, many others who’ll appreciate your hard work, pay a visit to www.rewardsforgrades.com. It’s a website that lists organizations that will give students external reinforcements for good grades, high test scores, perfect school attendance, and other behaviors that students are usually expected to produce just because they’re students. Krispy Kreme offers a free doughnut for each A, Blockbuster gives free kids’ movie rentals, Chick-fil-A rewards honor roll membership and perfect attendance with free kids’ meals, and Limited Too offers a $5 discount on merchandise if you present a report card “with passing grades” (which, in many school districts, might mean all D’s).
Before you get too excited by visions of a “grades for junk food” scam, you should know that there are often age limits on these offers. However, if you’re a precocious fourth grader reading this textbook, feel free to cash in on the goods. Or if you happen to be enrolled at Wichita State University, you already might be familiar with the Cash for Grades initiative (www.cashforgrades.com). The proposal is that an 8%-per-credit-hour increase to student fees would be used to then reward good student performance: $624 to a student with a 3.5 GPA at the end of a semester, $804 for straight A’s.
Where do you stand on this issue? Is this much ado about nothing or too much of a good thing? Some proponents of rewarding good academic performance argue that it mirrors the real world that, presumably, academic performance is preparing students to enter. After all, in most jobs, better performance is reinforced with better salaries, so why not model that in the school system? On the other hand, shouldn’t the search for knowledge be reward enough? Is the subtle shift away from wanting to learn for its own sake to wanting to learn for a doughnut harmful in the long run?"

Jillian: The Student

The Schedule for the week!

One of my teacher's graciously provided estimated times each assignment should take.

(by the way reading Chapter 4 is taking a lot longer than 70min!)

My Child Development class is divided into five  2 and a half week long units. 

All of the assignments are due the last day of the unit. 

The first "due date" is this Wednesday.

I didn't really pace myself well this first unit. 

I am really overwhelmed with trying to stay caught up.

Regardless it is still very interesting. 

One the most interesting things that I have learned so far?

Synesthesia.

A sensory phenomenon where people actually see certain numbers and letters in different colors. 

There are other kinds of synesthesia, like tasting flavors or seeing colors when you hear certain tones. 

Crazy, huh?

Do any of you have this? 

Just curious because I think that seeing numbers and words in color or when you hear music would be a wonderfully amazing way to see life!

By the way, Stevie Wonder?

He was a Synesthete. 

Psych 111

Monday

[70min] Read Chapter 4

[20min] Take Chapter 4 Quiz

Tuesday

[90min] Read ”There’s Something Here”

Answer questions

[30min] 8pm – Office Hours

Turn in Class Meeting Report

Wednesday

Finish up Child 210 assignments!

[60min]  by 8pm Perception and Sensation Essay

Thursday

[60min] “Scientific American” Discussion Board

[80min] Group Discussion Board

Friday

 [60min] Field Experiment

Saturday

[70min] Prepare and take Lesson 3 Exam

Self-Assessment

Review Next Week’s Assignments

Child 210

Monday

Finish Observation’s in Development

Finish Reflection Journals

Tuesday

Finish Reflection Journals

Dear Abby Responses

Wednesday

Finish Dear Abby Responses

Thursday

Chapter 5 Fact or Fiction

Read Chapter 5

Chapter 5 reading check

Friday

Chapter 5 Journal Entries

Collaborative Quest

Saturday 

Finish Week’s assignments

Student again! REALLY

I am now, officially, signed up for online classes through BYU-Idaho for my Online Degree. EEEEK. I am very excited....and nervous. I am taking some pretty easy courses this first semester, to help ease me into the program! Classes start September 10th! I'm a student again!

Opening Social

Soooo fun. the entire family student on campus housing had an opening social with free cotton candy, sno cones, hot dogs and tons of activities! There was this adorable home made train that I rode in with Tipo which he LOVED, he was bobbing when we got in it. and he had his face painted (it was game day so we had them do a Y and I think that's all he would have sat for. and we helped Tipo play games to win tickets to buy two balloons which he also LOVES! and they had a football throwing contest and quad tug-of-wars which Cody participated in. Which is now the reason he is practically bed ridden with a hurting back!!!! Poor Cody!!!! He will see a back specialist next Wednesday. But we still had tons of fun!!!

Outages, Orem, and Flights

Oh my goodness, we could not have left Rexburg any sooner. Thursday Cody spent the day doing Finals and helping me pack in between. Packing with a 4month old is pretty hard. He seemed clingyer than usual , we tried just letting him scream but after awhile it got unbearable. ^_^ Then around 7:30ish, while Cody was taking a test and my neighbor was helping me clean our power went out. And not just Hyde Park, but ALL of Rexburg, and some other towns close by!!! It was pitch black!!!! luckily I knew where my flashlight was and we were able to have a bit of light. Soon after Cody came home and brought in our three large flashlights from our headlight miss hap. Our neighbor went home after Cody got home. (she stayed with me, which was nice). Needless to say we didn't get much cleaning done which is what we had planned to do so we could get out of there as early as possible. So until 10:30pm (which is when the power came back on) we got ready for bed and called everyone to tell them.
By the time the lights came back on we were in bed asleep, so we just slept until early in the morning and started cleaning. We had to keep pushing back our check out time. Even when she did come to check us out we still had little things here and there we had to clean and stuff on the lawn that still needed to be packed. And our van was already packed to a pulp! Tipo was cramped. poor kid.
We finally left around 12pm which scared us because we needed to get Orem before dark (no one wants to drive in Utah, but especially without headlights!!! Luckily the sun sets a bit later in Orem than Kennewick and Rexburg. So we made like RIGHT as the sun went down. Emilee and Mark were good enough to let us stay at there place. Which we ended up staying until Sunday morning.
We were going to leave Saturday but then Bailey remembered that because we were riding buddy pass we could not go on Saturday (high fly day and just before a holiday) so we had to wait until Sunday. Saturday evening I guess there were some delays and cancellations but luckily not to Pasco so there were still alot of open seats on the 11 am flight on Sunday. So Emilee drove us to the airport and we went to the computer check in but it didn't work no matter what we did we could not check in. so we had to get in line to talk to an agent. there were only like 2 or 3 working with a TON of people in line, in an hour and half we had barely made it half way through. Luckily Bailey helped us get through and there was no line at security we flew though and made it JUST in time to get on the plane!!! ^_^ let me tall you, it was a STRESSFUL weekend. I am SOOO glad to be home. The thought of going back to Rexburg makes me a little sick. Not that I don't like it, we were just ready to move on.